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Hard Startups

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: Hard Startups

#151

Post by wwweston »

pjdemers wrote: post #7

The problem with startups building hard tech is it takes a long time to fail. Failures that take decades doesn't work in the startup model. Image working on a fusion reactor. It might take 25 years to fail. The failure may not be that your idea doesn't work, but because some other kind of reactor comes along that is a better business (ie, cheaper). At this point, you are now a world class expert at a technology that…

Very much agree with most of your comment, but:

> At this point, you are now a world class expert at a technology that is not economically viable. But, you can't transfer that knowledge, or at least most of it.

I strongly suspect that anyone who can become a world class tech expert to the point where they can push at the boundaries of what's possible has transferable skills.

Now, that's a different statement from "can get hired on transferable skills," at least depending on the capacity of hiring insights in the industry at large. But I figure it needs to be said lest we reinforce the problem.

Re: Hard Startups

#152

Post by coffeemug »

dheera wrote: post #35

> The most counterintuitive secret about startups is that it’s often easier to succeed with a hard startup than an easy one. For white male founders, yes. For a lot of others, they don't believe you can do something hard. Speaking from numerous fundraising experiences in which I got continually asked crappy "how do I believe you can do this" and even "what would you do if I do [bad thing]" type questions instead of g…

Do you seriously think white male founders don't get asked these questions?

Re: Hard Startups

#153

Post by marcosdumay »

1996 wrote: post #41
marcosdumay wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ugh, can you imagine how bad TCP/IP would have sucked if it had been developed by venture capital funding? It was. Several times. It was developed by a lot of large companies too. Nobody remember those, for obvious reasons, but people used to use them.

People like to forget. It helps pretend government research and alliances always produce the best outcomes. Your example may be a bit too old. Even novell netware, token ring etc won't ring a bell to many people. Try a simpler one instead: Do you guys remember about the various wireless standards before Wifi? The Orinocos and the Intel 2011 PCMCIA were IIRC among the first ones of the 802.11b - quickly eclipsing ever…

> It helps pretend government research and alliances always produce the best outcomes.

Well, at least on this case government research did produce the best outcome. By far. So far no comparison even makes sense, and people don't even remember there were other attempts.

Re: Hard Startups

#154

Post by dana321 »

Solving hard problems is the trap of the genius. I know.

We want a simpler world, but create complex software to do that. All we are doing is moving the complexity under the rug somewhere else. The complexity is still there, warts and all.

Doing something mundane over a large surface area (quantity being the hard vector) is better than solving a really difficult problem that has little reach in terms of real-world value.

The complexity in my own startup is its multi-layered nature, solving multiple problems for multiple levels of ability. I'm still aware of the fail aspect, but one layer will succeed. I know this. I have a 10 year challenge, but sooner is better. I know for a fact what i'm doing isn't being done out in the wild apart from a couple of sporadic os projects badly implemented and a couple of small commercial ventures that kind-of work. On different products on different levels.

If you're going to put your eggs into one basket, make it the basket of n dimensions.

Re: Hard Startups

#155

Post by pfdietz »

otoburb wrote: post #113
FiatLuxDave wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good question. My first thought was, "We didn't". But that's really just pessimistic memories speaking. My second thought was, "A perpetual state of stress and fear!". Also pessimistic memories, but closer to the truth. In reality, we had initial seed funding for about a year. We had a number of goals we had established, including vacuum chamber, getting the ion source running, first beam, first neutrons. We…

If you attempted another fusion startup today would the odds of success be higher, or is fusion still about as far away as it was 20 years ago?

Fusion used to be aiming at being better than fission, because that was the default post-fossil energy source.

But now renewables are cheaper than that. So the competition has gotten better since then, and continues to improve rapidly, and it's not clear fusion can ever get cheap enough to compete with them.

Another argument is that fusion reactors will require robots to maintain them (even the aneutronic ones will become too radioactive for hands on maintenance). But if you require robots that can do that, why not just develop and sell those robots, which would be generally useful?

Re: Hard Startups

#156

Post by 1996 »

marcosdumay wrote: post #153
1996 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People like to forget. It helps pretend government research and alliances always produce the best outcomes. Your example may be a bit too old. Even novell netware, token ring etc won't ring a bell to many people. Try a simpler one instead: Do you guys remember about the various wireless standards before Wifi? The Orinocos and the Intel 2011 PCMCIA were IIRC among the first ones of the 802.11b - quickly eclipsing ever…

> It helps pretend government research and alliances always produce the best outcomes. Well, at least on this case government research did produce the best outcome. By far. So far no comparison even makes sense, and people don't even remember there were other attempts.

So you mean, when something fit their narrative (here: government research is better) people forget about other attempts? And counter examples in similar domains (here: wifi) are also dismissed?

Color me impressed!

Re: Hard Startups

#157

Post by 100-xyz »

spectramax wrote: post #45

What bothers me about Sam Altman's writing is the following: 1) He talks about X, X being an observation with survivorship bias painted all over it, but Sam Altman asserts as if it is true. Stop writing with authority over unsubstantiated claims - you can only be humble and say "Perhaps X is true because of my observations, take it with a grain salt". 2) Statements like "Easy startups are easy to start but hard to ma…

Agreed. I thought the article was of poor quality.

Re: Hard Startups

#158

Post by webn3rd »

stevoski wrote: post #23
kristiandupont wrote: post #4

Before I started Submotion, I did a fairly thorough analysis of what kind of startup I wanted to create. I decided that I wanted to create something that - was B2B. Consumers are fickle, things can explode but they can also go out of style just as fast. It's more sexy and makes for better smalltalk but my assessment is that they are much more difficult to grow predictably. - targets SME's. I am somewhat extroverted f…

I went through a similar thought process a couple of years ago before starting Feature Upvote. Until then I had spent too many years on a technically difficult consumer product. It had drained away my life force and my passion for coding. In my case I decided my next product should be: - B2B - target SME's - a simple CRUD app: a nice UI on top of a simple database schema. It is a nice business to run. Pleasant custom…

Care to elaborate on the business and how you scaled it? I'm really curious. Did you build it as a side thing?

Re: Hard Startups

#159

Post by fenwick67 »

killjoywashere wrote: post #126
SolarNet wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Valley is now the new East Coast people, the new Madison Avenue. Doing a hard startup in the Valley now is like trying to start Intel in 1960 New York. Hard startups are hard enough, without trying to do that. I think places like Detroit are promising for this. Lots of cheap real-estate, a local history of technical skills, and serious problems to solve (urban farming for example). Also due to the internet age,…

Detroit has deep, fundamental problems. the weather, the utilities, the failed neighborhoods. You can cut costs significantly just by moving to San Diego and not have to explain to prospective applicants why living in a windswept frozen wasteland half the year is appealing.

San Diego has deep, fundamental problems. the cost of living, the homelessness, the failed neighborhoods. You can cut costs significantly just by moving to Detroit and not have to explain to prospective applicants why living in a feces-riddled yet expensive nightmare is appealing.

Re: Hard Startups

#160

Post by quelsolaar »

Im all-in on hard problems, but the startup echo system isn't. I have to self fund because I don't think there is funding available for projects that take time and don't have a fast ROI. To guild the kid of things that can disrupt the really big players: FAANG, big oil, Detroit, Boeing you need more time and need to solve harder problems. I find it curious that Elon Musk is such a hero in the startup world, when his companies had to be self funded for a long time because VCs don't want to invest in that kind of bets.
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